


Like Clockwork

by theresonatinglight



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Gen, Robots, Science Fiction, maybe humans are the real robots, work!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:22:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22308610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theresonatinglight/pseuds/theresonatinglight
Summary: 07:10Too early, I think when the alarm goes off for the second time this morning. I drag myself out of bed and go through the motions of getting ready for work. I put my contacts in and brush my teeth, and I double check to make sure my car keys, wallet, and phone are in my bag. I stumble out the sliding door of my apartment building and onto the street. My world is still in a haze, but then again, when is it not?08:50I drive into the parking lot at the office to find that my parking spot has been taken. The parking spot isn’t technically mine, but I’ve parked there nearly every weekday for the past three years. Today is not going to be a good day.--Rated T for some light swearing.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Like Clockwork

**07:00**

I wake up to the alarm blaring, the early June sun streaming through the blinds, the birds chirping outside my window. I press snooze. The birds still sing. _Why don’t they ever shut up?_ I groan and pull a pillow over my head.

**07:10**

_Too early_ , I think when the alarm goes off for the second time this morning. I drag myself out of bed and go through the motions of getting ready for work. I put my contacts in and brush my teeth, and I double check to make sure my car keys, wallet, and phone are in my bag. I stumble out the sliding door of my apartment building and onto the street. My world is still in a haze, but then again, when is it not?

**08:50**

I drive into the parking lot at the office to find that my parking spot has been taken. The parking spot isn’t _technically_ mine, but I’ve parked there nearly every weekday for the past three years. Today is not going to be a good day. I drive to the next row over and steal Jack’s spot.

I walk toward the building entrance and, like always, the security guard holds the door open for me. “Good morning, Charlie!” he says as I approach.

“Good morning,” I respond automatically. _How is he always this enthusiastic?_

I ride the elevator to the fourth floor, staring straight ahead in hopes of avoiding small talk with the other passengers. When I reach my desk, I turn on my computer and pull up my email to determine what work needs to be done today. My coworker in the neighboring cubicle, Ed, arrives at exactly nine o’clock and greets me, “Hello, it’s nice to see you.” 

We’ve been sitting next to each other all year and I still find it uncanny how punctual he is. Edison is the model worker – he always meets his deadlines exactly on time, he never wastes time socializing in the office, his spreadsheets are flawless, and he’s always respectful, whether he’s speaking to a department manager or janitorial staff. He seems perfectly content in his job. As for me, I can’t say that I anticipated eight hours per day of data analysis when I received my degree in Mechanical Engineering, but a job is a job. Besides, the databases I compile, formulas I run, and data sorts I apply are at least as important to the company as the engineering drawings and CAD files other engineers produce. It’s unfortunate that understanding this doesn’t deter boredom from setting in midway through the week.

My mother says that in the workforce, people rise to their level of incompetence. Exemplary workers who take initiative are promoted to managerial positions, after which they promptly fail at their newly appointed tasks. This is because they possess the skillset necessary to be good data analysts or computer programmers and not the skillset required to effectively lead a group of other humans or to supervise a project and keep progress on schedule. People like Ed and I have no desire to learn where our levels of incompetence lie. We keep our heads down, deliver work on time, and don’t ask too many questions. Though my work can be tedious, it’s also uncomplicated, safe, predictable, and _comfortable_.

**11:57**

My lunch break begins. When I leave my desk for the cafeteria, Ed is still working. This is another of his idiosyncrasies: he stands up from his chair at noon and walks down the stairs to the cafeteria, where he eats his packed lunch of an apple and a turkey and lettuce sandwich and scrolls through social media for the remainder of his break. He returns to his computer precisely at 13:00, like clockwork. Realistically, this almost exactly mirrors how I spend my break. The main difference: I buy the cafeteria’s hot special on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

**17:00**

_Finally!_ I think as I watch the “59” in the bottom right corner of my computer screen turn into a “00.” I turn off my machine and pack my bag to leave. “Have a nice night, Ed,” I call out to my neighbor on my way to the elevator. 

“You too, Charlotte. See you tomorrow,” he responds. Even his small talk is routine, yet it catches me off guard every time he uses my full name.

Once I get to my car, I pull out my phone and scroll through my notifications. There’s no point in driving off right away – all 400 cars in the parking lot attempting to leave at the same time results in a bottleneck nightmare near the exits every day, without failure. After 15 minutes, I pull out of the parking spot and begin my drive home. Once I turn left out of the parking lot, I can follow that road straight for 9.3 miles before turning again. There’s really no need to pay attention to the road. There are never any cars or pedestrians here. Well, there are never any cars or pedestrians here other than Ed, but he always crosses right after I pass the intersec—

“SHIT! OH MY GOD WHAT WAS THAT?” I exclaim. To my horror, my mental autopilot has resulted in my car ramming right into Edison. Time slows down. I realize that parking one row over in the lot must have caused a slight delay in my arrival at this intersection. A few seconds was all it took to sync Ed and my paths and cause them to meet in the crosswalk. 

I run to the front of the car with my phone out and 9-1-1 dialed. But when I see him, I don’t press “CALL.” There, right in front of my (now dented) car, lies Edison. He’s unmoving, his eyes staring blankly up at me. That’s not what disturbs me, though. The truly disconcerting thing about the whole incident is that under the ripped skin of his arm lies not blood and muscle but rather shining chrome gears and red, black, and green 10 AWG wires. _A prosthetic? No, that’s impossible – the skin on the side of his head where his skull met the pavement is also torn and revealing metal. No one has a prosthetic skull. What the fuck is this guy?_ I’m utterly perplexed. I have worked with this man for a year – he must be human. Instead of calling the police, I make a split-second decision and haul Ed’s motionless body into the trunk of my car.

**19:00**

“Thank God no one watched me bring Ed into the building. That was so close! What was I thinking bringing him back? I should have just left— Am I actually talking to myself?” I groan and sink down the wall, my head in my hands. I must really be going insane. _Maybe that’s what it is; maybe my coworker isn’t an android, and I’m just telling myself he is because hitting a pedestrian has made me deranged._ I wave away these thoughts and look back at Edison, whom I have left on the floor in the middle of my living room. No, that is definitely metal shining through the holes in his skin.

**19:15**

My curiosity gets the best of me. I crawl closer to my fallen colleague and poke the metal of his skull gently. His eyes are still open. It’s incredibly unnerving. I close his eyes and prod him with more force. There is no reaction. I drag over my old toolkit from college, back when I used my free time to build quadcopters and mini combat robots. “I _will_ get to the bottom of this,” I mutter to myself, selecting a knife and a set of pliers. I begin the dissection.

I painstakingly cut and peel away the skin on Edison’s arm and head where I hit him. His arm, I realize, is far more complex than I initially expected. Thin, delicate gears line the side of his arm, connecting to a small motor and a ball joint at his shoulder a hinge at his elbow, and a set of pistons down his arm to mimic a pulse. _The engineer who designed you sure was thorough_ , I think. The gears are not entirely necessary, existing to control the arm’s movements and keep them in sync. Mostly, they’re an aesthetic touch. I’m most impressed with the design of Ed’s hand. His wrist is another ball joint, its rigidity softened by the socket’s composite of hard plastic at the center and more flexible material toward the edges. Each finger has its own circuit to ensure proper tolerances of all three joints. Pressure sensors line his finger pads and palms. _So that’s how he manages to be such a swift typist._

The damage is easy to spot. His forearm is dented and bent at an unnatural angle, the gears in that region translated too far from each other to connect. Some of the wires at his elbow are torn, and it would appear that his electrical nervous system has short-circuited. I remove the gears and use a hammer to straighten out the linkage in his forearm. Then, I replace the gears with my pliers. They fit perfectly. My soldering iron fixes the wires easily. I forgot how much I enjoyed using these tools. Once I’ve finished reconstructing his arm, I pull the flexible plastic skin back over my handiwork and seal Edison’s arm with a heat gun. I do the same for his head wound. Thankfully, the metal plate that serves as his skull is not dented. I can infer from its durability and size that it must contain a control board and serve as a processing center for the sensor data from all over his body. In other words, Edison’s head contains the machine equivalent to a human’s brain. Now that Edison is repaired, I just need to find his power switch. I survey the robot on my floor. _Aha!_ I lightly press a small button on the back of his neck. Edison’s eyes blink open and he sits up slowly. 

“Amazing,” I murmur.

“Hello, it’s nice to see you, Charlotte.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> I'm normally too nervous to post my writing, but I guess I have to start somewhere! I wrote this as a reflective bit of Science Fiction for one of my courses, and I was surprised to find that I didn't hate it. Drawing inspiration from H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds and George Orwell's 1984, I tried to ponder the question of "what if we, with our clockwork lives, are the real robots?"
> 
> ~theresonatinglight


End file.
